AN  ARMY  DOCTOR  ON 
MEDICAL  OPPORTUNITIES 
ABROAD 

A personal  letter  from  an 
Army  doctor  in  France  to 
an  old  friend  and  college 
classmate  in  America 

France,  November  12,  1918. 
My  dear : 

I call  your  attention  to  date  above. 
Naturally  we  are  all  still  thrilling  with 
the  news  of  yesterday — that  the  armis- 
tice is  an  assured  fact  and  that  hostili- 
ties have  ceased.  I need  not  attempt 
to  tell  you  with  what  joy  it  has  been 
received ; the  whole  world  shares  it  and 
I have  no  doubt  that  New  York  is  just 
as  jubilant  as  the  cities  and  towns  over 
here.  Outside  the  window  of  the  little 
office  from  which  I am  writing,  some 
two  hundred  of  our  boys,  about  to  be 
evacuated  from  the  hospital,  are  whist- 
ling in  a way  I have  not  heard  since 
we  arrived  here  some  two  months  ago. 
When  shall  we  get  home?  is  the  ques- 
tion on  everybody’s  lips  this  morning. 


With  the  end  of  the  war  and  the  act- 
ual signing  of  the  peace  compacts, 
which  is  now  surely  not  far  off,  the 
millions  of  men  in  our  armies  will  be. 
sooner  or  later,  returned  to  the  home- 
land, to  face  the  problem  of  their  fu- 
ture employment  or  activities.  Among 
them  will  be  some  thousands  of  medi- 
cal men.  Most  of  these  men  will  re- 
turn with  their  old  positions  and  prac- 
tices calling  for  them,  but  still  foot- 
loose. Many  of  them,  and  especially 
the  younger  ones,  will  come  back  to  be- 
gin life  entirely  anew,  free  as  no  like 
body  of  medical  men  in  our  experience 
have  ever  been  to  choose  the  field  of 
their  activities.  All  of  them  will  re- 
turn with  wider  views  of  life  and  of  the 
possibilities  of  their  work  than  have 
heretofore  been  common  among  medi- 
cal men.  The  question  of  deepest  in- 
terest to  us  is  how  many  of  them  can 
be  enlisted  in  the  missionary  service, 
how  many  the  mission  societies  are 
prepared  to  seek  and  employ. 

There  is  no  doubt  that  if  the  Church 
is  ready  to  go  forward,  there  is  an  op- 
portunity the  like  of  which  will  never, 
within  our  life-time,  come  again. 
Never  again  will  there  be  so  many 
men,  peculiarly  fitted  by  their  expe- 
rience to  listen  to  the  call  to  world- 


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wide  service  and  also  qualified  by  their 
experience  to  meet  the  call  with  un- 
usual ability.  The  question  the  Church 
must  face  is  how  far  it  is  prepared  to 
go  in  enlisting  medical  men  for  work 
in  foreign  fields  and  also  what  scope  it 
will  seek  to  give  to  the  men  it  secures. 
The  number  of  men  who  can  be  used 
in  the  mission  field  will  be  determined 
by  the  scope  of  the  medical  mission- 
ary’s work. 

What  I want  to  call  particularly  to 
your  attention  is  the  fact  that  one  of 
the  results  of  the  war  will  be  to  present 
a problem  of  perhaps  equal  importance 
in  another  field  of  medical  effort. 

One  of  the  really  startling  results  (to 
me)  of  experience  in  the  medical  work 
of  an  army  is  the  comparative  unim- 
portance of  what  is  done  for  the  indi- 
vidual in  the  way  of  treatment,  either 
medical  or  surgical,  when  weighed 
against  the  tremendous  influence  of  the 
measures  that  affect  the  army  as  a 
whole.  Changes  in  treatment  save  a 
life  here  and  there,  or  perhaps  a few 
hundred  lives,  and  it  may  be  that  these 
few  lives  are  of  great  value,  but  the  big 
things  are  the  measures  of  preventive 
medicine,  sanitation,  and  hygiene, 
which  touch  the  whole  mass  of  mil- 
lions of  men,  and  when  properly  em- 


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ployed,  save  tens  of  thousands.  Let 
me  cite  the  anti-typhoid  vaccination  as 
an  example  of  what  I mean.  Typhoid 
killed  thousands  in  1898  and  well-nigh 
paralyzed  the  army  by  its  ravages.  In 
1918  it  has  played  almost  no  part  in 
either  the  morbidity  or  mortality  of  the 
army.  The  big  question  before  the 
army  today  is  not  any  new  measure 
in  medicine  or  surgery,  but  what  shall 
be  done  to  stop  the  epidemics  of  in- 
fluenza and  pneumonia.  The  reply 
will  probably  be  a new  form  of  vaccin- 
ation. In  fact,  Major is  now 

engaged  in  a great  effort  along  that 
line. 

The  greatest  things  to  be  done  in 
the  Orient  lie  along  these  lines — the 
prevention  of  disease  among  the  teem- 
ing millions.  The  possibilities  of  serv- 
ice in  this  field  are  almost  unlimited. 
The  opportunities  are  open  to  qualified 
men.  Who  will  lay  hold  of  these  op- 
portunities and  realize  the  possibilities 
of  the  situation?  I know  that  to  some 
the  suggestion  of  the  idea  that  to  equip 
men  for  such  service  and  send  them 
out  as  missionaries  will  be  revolution- 
ary. To  you  it  cannot  be  new,  for  I 
recall  a letter  from  one  of  the  men  in 
Persia  pointing  out  the  vast  possibili- 
ties inherent  in  this  preventive  work 


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and  asking  that  men  qualified  in  bac- 
teriology should  be  sent  out  to  try  to 
realize  them. 

This  is  the  work  of  the  Church  as 
much  as  is  the  preaching  of  the  gospel, 
I firmly  believe,  and  I surmise  that  the 
developments  of  these  war  years  have 
opened  many  eyes  to  the  power  and 
the  appeal  of  the  work  done  for  the 
lame,  the  halt,  and  the  blind.  Has 
there  been  any  word  spoken  since  the 
beginning  of  the  war  that  will  match 
in  power  the  practical  demonstration 
of  the  fruits  of  Christianity?  I see  great 
things  in  the  future  in  the  tremendous 
interest  aroused  by  the  war  in  relief 
work,  and  the  boundless  generosity  of 
the  people  when  a cause  really  reaches 
their  hearts,  if  these  can  only  be  laid 
hold  of  and  used  for  the  work  of  min- 
istry in  other  lands. 

I need  not  say  in  closing  that  I 
would  not  be  thought  to  belittle  the 
preaching  of  the  Word  alone.  I wish 
only  to  see  it  given  the  power  that 
comes  from  its  practical  application, 
just  as  nearly  as  possible  in  the  way 
in  which  Christ  himself  coupled  the 

Ever  your  friend, 
Lieut.-Col.  M.  C., 

Base  Hospital,  No. , France. 

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The  Foreign  Mission  Boards  of  the 
United  States  are  looking  for  a large 
number  of  Christian  medical  men  who 
will  go  out  especially  to  the  countries 
of  Asia  and  Africa  to  heal  the  sick,  to 
promote  the  training  of  physicians  in 
these  lands,  to  prevent  disease  and  to 
diminish  human  suffering  in  the  name 
and  in  the  spirit  of  Christ,  and  to  help 
to  introduce  the  principles  of  sanita- 
tion, hygiene,  and  human  sympathy 
which  prevail  in  a Christian  civiliza- 
tion. Any  man  in  the  army  or  navy, 
who  is  interested  may  learn  of  these 
opportunities  from  the  foreign  mission 
board  of  the  Christian  denomination  to 
which  he  belongs,  and  any  chaplain  or 
Y.  M.  C.  A.  secretary  will  be  glad  to 
put  him  in  communication  with  the 
missionary  agencies. 


Published  for  the  National  War  Work 
Council  of  Young  Men’s  Christian  Associa- 
tions, by  Association  Press,  347  Madison 
Avenue,  New  York. 


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